scotty stevenson

Scotty Stevenson Artist Statement

current work

A dictionary fell open to the Morse Code entry. It had a tiny translation of the alphabet into the dots and dashes. It reminded me my Scouting years and spies, of the early western railroads expansion, of dueling cryptologist in the theater of world wars, the rhythmic fist signatures of some retreating Viet Cong patrol. Morse code was the tom-tom drum of the industrial revolution, and like all the obsolete tongues fell on hard times and deaf ears. I started painting these dots and dashes into knobby grid-like landscapes recounting in the Morse code the memories and stories of people in my life. Juggling the dots and dashes into a nests of colors and punch drunk patterns I paint my memories of the ones who raised me, loved me, in a language meant to be heard, not seen. Like a P.O.W. tapping out news to an empty cell as the turnkey laughs I accept that the original text is lost, slowly encrypted out of my control with the constant layering of revised intrusions. Where the drama of somber and prime colors in rigid or hapless designs sets the tone of the narrative. In the end I am left with an undecipherable painting of colors and pattern, conveying to the viewer that hidden here, in the mystery of code, is the story of something well lived. I strive for a painting that makes amends for forgetting and spitting at its elders, that rises face first out of the mud carrying a limp and bruise in every incontinent brush stroke and color.

defining art

Sorry can't be done. "Art" is a sulking forced march that doesn't play fair or hold still for a pat-down. Never carrying when frisked, to quick with an alibi no matter the century. It's that tar baby Buddha perched just out of sight guzzling the house turp plinking your cold cold ears with it's cold cold nails. Art hides all the secrets in fetching smoke and fun house mirrors, I'ld be lucky to finger it in a police lineup after it ransacked my life and skipped out on the bill. Why else did Gulley Jimson to put that impatient bulldozer in gear.

So here we stand, for arguments sake, an artist, with visualizations of a desired work so James Bond perfect, so cool, elegant, fearless, so many moves ahead of the real me I wish I could poison the prick. So here we stand, also the villain, moping on the secret island, needy and whimpering, "the turp's too dirty, this yellow is a crappy yellow, the light is fading, it always fading....." I don't know how as artists we cobble in the mind these higher calling visualizations, whether they are just uncontaminated potentials waiting for a disciplined effort or mocking magic you limp after. Painting always wins, me, I am just a forensic crime scene shadow of a bungled job with defensive wounds.

1998: 2nd Place In The First Annual Fells Point Fun Festival Visual Arts Awards, Sponsored by the Society For The Preservation Of Fells Point,
Juried by Nancy Miller Batty, Chief Curator of the Delaware Art Museum.

Scotty Stevenson was born in the Texas panhandle in the mid-50's a part of a meandering oil field family. He had a checkerboard rearing moving up and down the Southern gulf coast, ending up in Singapore in the late 60's. He returned to states to study photography at the Maryland Institute College Of Art in 1973 where he fell under the thrall of painting. Weaned off the Maryland Institute in the late 70's, he is currently sequestered, living and reviving his painting in Austin TX.